Tag Archives: living overseas

There’s an old expression that says “Good fences make good neighbors”. Whoever wrote that obviously never lived in a middle class moo baan in Thailand where real doors would be better than fences. Having researched housing options in Chiang Mai for about a half-year before we moved here, we decided that a gated suburban community with amenities like a pool and gym suits us best. Unlike Malaysia that mimics most western style countries with agents specializing in housing needs, Thailand requires some more due diligence. With no regulations, anyone can open up shop on the internet and claim to be an “agent” and many people find rentals by simply driving around and looking for signs. Given the limited number of legitimate agents showing houses, we’re happy and lucky that we found a three bedroom house in a beautiful tree-lined community that hardly anyone knows about. Too bad the architects didn’t understand the words peace, quiet and privacy when they designed an entire housing development devoid of front doors. Using screen doors as the main entrance, the idea works fine for those with an end house on small streets. For the everyone else, I suggest researching the neighbors and not taking the word of your landlord who told us “they’re not usually around”.

Our main entrance is a screen door

Astoundingly similar to our neighborhood in Walnut Creek, California or our first crack at suburbia in a West Calgary, our gated community features modern three and four bedroom houses ranging from moderate sized to large. Coming in at about 1,800 square feet, our corner lot is way in the back on the last street. Other than the occasional airplane noise that subsides by midnight, you’d normally be able to hear a pin drop. Strangely quiet at night, it’s easy to forget it’s a developing nation and most residents are elderly upper class retired Thai people, Chinese nationals that somehow don’t speak a word of Thai orEnglish (more on that later), some working farangs and scores of well to do families whose kids sound more American than Asian. Inclusive in our very reasonable rent of 20,500 Thai Baht, we get unlimited use of an infinity pool and a rather crappy gym (We pay for a better one outside the community). Despite paying 30% less than our old condo in Penang, many fellow expats on the Chiang Mai social media groups think we’re high-class because we own a car and pay triple what they do so they think we’re living the good life. Unfortunately, there’s one real pain in the ass family in the entire community and they live directly across the street.

Deciding not work anymore sounds great to many people, especially when you’re fifteen years away from the “standard” retirement age. But as the saying goes “it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye”. Never before in modern economic times has it been riskier to end your income stream and that weighs on me every day. Having been extremely lucky twice, Diane and I bought and sold two houses in totally different markets and came out ahead in both cases. Allowing us to put a large down payment on our California house at a time when nobody was buying, we sold our Canadian house four months before the market peaked and then negotiated a purchase price one year later well below asking price in 2008 when sellers were desperate. Amazingly, after a 30% decline in our home’s value, Bay Area home prices rebounded quickly allowing us to sell last year at a 12.5% premium over asking price. Fast forward 14 months and here we are living mostly from that sale for as many years as it lasts.

But all good things come to an end and although timing is everything in life, sometimes life throws you a curveball when you’re expecting a slider. With North American interest rates at all time lows and not expected to rebound to anything meaningful in my lifetime thanks to 40 years of horrible government policies worldwide, it’s been comforting seeing our MM2H Fixed Deposit accruing interest at 3.3% annually. For those unfamiliar with the program, the ministry requires participants of the Malaysia My Second Home Program (MM2H) to place a fixed deposit of 150,000 Ringgit in a Malaysian bank and maintain it while on the program. Most banks issue two separate deposits of 100,000 and 50,000 each with one year maturities and interest can be either paid as a cash dividend to a local checking account or reinvested as part of the principal. Unfortunately, the ministry prefers (decrees, actually) that fixed deposits must be set up with twelve month maturities and renewed at prevailing interest rates. Unexpectedly, Bank Negara (Malaysia’s central bank) recently cut nominal interest rates despite never ending claims about having the strongest economy in Southeast Asia and the move adversely affects interest starved citizens of western nations.

We’re Rob and Diane, an American and a Canadian. After an unexpected layoff we decided on early retirement. It sounds like more fun than work. We sold our house and stuff and moved to Malaysia but didn’t like it so now we’re in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Read More